by Han Kang
“I need this evening to go well. You know it’s the first time the boss has invited me to one of these dinners.”
We only just managed to get to the restaurant in time, and even then only because I’d gone flat out on the main road. The two-story building, fronted by a spacious car park, was clearly a sophisticated establishment.
The cold of late winter was stubbornly lingering, and my wife looked chilly as she stood in the car park dressed in only a thin spring coat. She hadn’t said a single word on the way here, but I convinced myself that this wouldn’t be a problem. There’s nothing wrong with keeping quiet; after all, hadn’t women traditionally been expected to be demure and restrained?
My boss, the managing director and the executive director had already arrived, along with their wives. The section chief and his wife turned up a few minutes after us, completing the party. There were nods and smiles all around as we exchanged greetings, took off our coats and hung them up. My boss’s wife, an imposing woman with finely plucked eyebrows and a large jade necklace clacking at her throat, escorted my wife and me over to the dining table, already laid for what promised to be a lavish meal, and sat down at the head of the table. The others all seemed quite at ease, like regulars. I took my seat, careful not to be seen to gawp at the ornate ceiling, which was as elaborately decorated as the eaves of a traditional building. My gaze was arrested by the sight of goldfish swimming lazily in a glass bowl, and I turned to address my wife, but what I saw there brought me up short.
She was wearing a slightly clinging black blouse, and to my utter mortification I saw that the outline of her nipples was clearly visible through the fabric. Without a doubt, she’d come out without a bra. When the other guests surreptitiously craned their necks, no doubt wanting to be sure that they really were seeing what they thought they were, the eyes of the executive director’s wife met mine. Feigning composure, I registered the curiosity, astonishment, and contempt that were revealed in turn in her eyes.
I could feel my cheeks flushing. All too conscious of my wife, sitting there hollow-eyed and making no attempt to join in with the other women’s exchange of pleasantries, I controlled myself and decided that the best thing to do, the only thing to do, was to act natural and pretend that there was nothing untoward.
“Did you have any problems finding the place?” my boss’s wife asked me.
“No, no, I’ve been past here once or twice before. In fact, I’d been thinking of coming here myself.”
“Ah, I see…yes, the garden has turned out quite well, hasn’t it? You ought to try coming in the daytime; you can see the flower beds through that window over there.”
But by the time the food began to be served, the strain of maintaining a casual facade, which I had just about managed so far, was bringing me close to breaking point.
The first thing placed in front of us was an exquisite dish of mung-bean jelly, dressed with thin slivers of green-pea jelly, mushrooms and beef. Up until then my wife had merely sat and observed the scene in silence, but just as the waiter was on the point of ladling some onto her plate, she finally opened her mouth.
“I won’t eat it.”
She’d spoken very quietly, but the other guests all instantly stopped what they were doing, directing glances of surprise and wonder at her emaciated body.
“I don’t eat meat,” she said, slightly louder this time.
“My word, so you’re one of those ‘vegetarians,’ are you?” my boss asked. “Well, I knew that some people in other countries are strict vegetarians, of course. And even here, you know, it does seem that attitudes are beginning to change a little. Now and then there’ll be someone claiming that eating meat is bad…after all, I suppose giving up meat in order to live a long life isn’t all that unreasonable, is it?”
“But surely it isn’t possible to live without eating meat?” his wife asked with a smile.
The waiter whisked nine plates away, leaving my wife’s still-gleaming plate on the table. The conversation naturally continued on the topic of vegetarianism.
“Do you remember those mummified human remains they discovered recently? Five hundred thousand years old, apparently, and even back then humans were hunting for meat—they could tell that from the skeletons. Meat eating is a fundamental human instinct, which means vegetarianism goes against human nature, right? It just isn’t natural.”
“People mainly used to turn vegetarian because they subscribed to a certain ideology…I’ve been to various doctors myself, to have some tests done and see if there was anything in particular I ought to be avoiding, but everywhere I went I was told something different…in any case, the idea of a special diet always made me feel uncomfortable. It seems to me that one shouldn’t be too narrow-minded when it comes to food.”
“People who arbitrarily cut out this or that food, even though they’re not actually allergic to anything—that’s what I would call narrow-minded,” the executive director’s wife chimed in; she had been sneaking sideways glances at my wife’s breasts for some time now. “A balanced diet goes hand in hand with a balanced mind, don’t you think?” And now she loosed her arrow directly at my wife. “Was there some special reason for your becoming a vegetarian? Health reasons, for example…or religious, perhaps?”
“No.” Her cool reply proved that she was completely oblivious to how delicate the situation had become. All of a sudden, a shiver ran through me—because I had a gut feeling that I knew what she was about to say next.
“I had a dream.”
I hurriedly spoke over her.
“For a long time my wife used to suffer from gastroenteritis, which was so acute that it disturbed her sleep, you see. A dietitian advised her to give up meat, and her symptoms got a lot better after that.”
Only then did the others nod in understanding.
“Well, I must say, I’m glad I’ve still never sat down with a proper vegetarian. I’d hate to share a meal with someone who considers eating meat repulsive, just because that’s how they themselves personally feel…don’t you agree?”
“Imagine you were snatching up a wriggling baby octopus with your chopsticks and chomping it to death—and the woman across from you glared like you were some kind of animal. That must be how it feels to sit down and eat with a vegetarian!”
The group broke out into laughter, and I was conscious of each and every separate laugh. Needless to say, my wife didn’t so much as crack a smile. By now, everyone was busy making sure that their mouths were fully occupied with eating, so that it wouldn’t be up to them to try and fill the awkward silences that were now peppering the conversation. It was clear that they were all uncomfortable.
The next dish was fried chicken in a chili and garlic sauce, and after that was raw tuna. My wife sat there immobile while everyone else tucked in, her nipples resembling a pair of acorns as they pushed against the fabric of her blouse. Her gaze roamed intently over the rapidly working mouths of the other guests, delving into every nook and cranny as though intending to soak up every little detail.
By the time the twelve magnificent courses were over, my wife had eaten nothing but salad and kimchi, and a little bit of squash porridge. She hadn’t even touched the sticky-rice porridge, as they had used a special recipe involving beef stock to give it a rich, luxurious taste. Gradually, the other guests learned to ignore her presence and the conversation started to flow again. Now and then, perhaps out of pity, they made an effort to include me, but in my heart of hearts I knew that they wanted to keep a certain distance between us.
When fruit was brought out for dessert my wife ate one small slice of apple and a single orange segment.
“You’re not hungry? But, my goodness, you’ve barely eaten anything!” There was something flamboyant about the friendly, sociable tone in which my boss’s wife expressed her concern. But the demure, apologetic smile that was the only reasonable response never came, and without even having the grace to look embarrassed, my wife simply stared baldly at my boss’s wife.
That stare appalled everyone present. Did she not even recognize the situation for what it was? Was it possible that she hadn’t grasped the status of the elegant middle-aged woman facing her? What shadowy recesses lurked in her mind, what secrets I’d never suspected? In that moment, she was utterly unknowable.
—
I didn’t know what I could do, exactly, but I knew that I had to do something.
That was the dilemma which tormented me as I drove home. My wife, on the other hand, appeared entirely unperturbed, seemingly unaware of how disgraceful her behavior had been. She just sat there resting her head against the sloping car window, apparently on the point of dozing off. Naturally, I got angry. Did she want to see her husband get fired? What the hell did she think she was doing?
But I had a feeling that none of it would make the slightest bit of difference. Neither rage nor persuasion would succeed in moving her, and I would be unable to take matters into my own hands.
After washing and putting on her nightclothes she disappeared into her own room rather than getting ready to sleep in the living room as we usually did. I was left pacing up and down when I heard the phone ring: my mother-in-law.
“How is everything with you? I hadn’t heard a thing for such a long time…”
“I’m sorry about that. It’s just that I’ve been so busy lately…is my father-in-law in good health?”
“Oh, nothing ever changes with us. Are things going well at work?”
I hesitated. “I’m fine. But as for my wife…”
“What about Yeong-hye, what’s the matter?” Her voice was laced with worry. She had never seemed to show much of an interest in her second daughter, but I suppose one’s children are one’s children, after all.
“The thing is, she’s stopped eating meat.”
“What did you say?”
“She’s stopped eating any kind of meat at all, even fish—all she lives on is vegetables. It’s been several months now.”
“What kind of talk is this? Surely you can always just tell her not to follow this diet.”
“Oh, I’ve told her, all right, but she still goes ahead and defies me. And what’s more, she’s even imposed this ridiculous diet on me—I can’t remember the last time I tasted meat in this house.”
My mother-in-law was lost for words, and I used her speechlessness as an opportunity to turn the screw a little tighter. “She’s become very weak. I’m not sure exactly how serious it is…”
“I can’t have this. Is Yeong-hye there? Pass her the phone.”
“She’s gone to bed now. I’ll tell her to call tomorrow morning.”
“No, leave it. I’ll call. How can that child be so defiant? Oh, you must be ashamed of her!”
After hanging up I riffled through my notebook and dialed my sister-in-law In-hye’s number.
My ears were assaulted by the sound of her young son bellowing “hello?” down the line.
“Please put your mother on.”
In-hye, who quickly took the receiver from her son, resembled my wife quite closely, but her eyes were larger and prettier, and overall she was much more feminine.
“Hello?”
Her voice as it sounded over the phone, always somehow more distinct than in person, never failed to send me into a state of sexual arousal. I informed her of my wife’s newfound vegetarianism in the same way as I had just done with her mother, listened to exactly the same sequence of astonishment followed by an apology, and put down the phone after accepting her assurances. I considered repeating the process by calling my wife’s younger brother, Yeong-ho, but decided that that would be overdoing it.
—
Dreams of murder.
Murderer or murdered….hazy distinctions, boundaries wearing thin. Familiarity bleeds into strangeness, certainty becomes impossible. Only the violence is vivid enough to stick. A sound, the elasticity of the instant when the metal struck the victim’s head…the shadow that crumpled and fell gleams cold in the darkness.
They come to me now more times than I can count. Dreams overlaid with dreams, a palimpsest of horror. Violent acts perpetrated by night. A hazy feeling I can’t pin down…but remembered as blood-chillingly definite.
Intolerable loathing, so long suppressed. Loathing I’ve always tried to mask with affection. But now the mask is coming off.
That shuddering, sordid, gruesome, brutal feeling. Nothing else remains. Murderer or murdered, experience too vivid to not be real. Determined, disillusioned. Lukewarm, like slightly cooled blood.
Everything starts to feel unfamiliar. As if I’ve come up to the back of something. Shut up behind a door without a handle. Perhaps I’m only now coming face-to-face with the thing that has always been here. It’s dark. Everything is being snuffed out in the pitch-black darkness.
—
Contrary to what I’d hoped, my mother- and sister-in-law’s efforts at persuasion had not the slightest influence on my wife’s eating habits. At the weekend, the phone rang and my wife picked up.
“Yeong-hye,” my father-in-law bellowed, “are you still not eating meat?” He’d never used a telephone in his life, and I could hear his excited shouts emerging from the receiver. “What d’you think you’re playing at, hey? Acting like this at your age, what on earth must Mr. Cheong think?” My wife stood there in perfect silence, holding the receiver to her ear. “Why don’t you answer? Can you hear me?”
A pan of soup was boiling on the stove, so my wife put the receiver down on the table without a word and disappeared into the kitchen. I stood there for a few moments listening to my father-in-law raging impotently, unaware that there was no one on the other end, then took pity on him and picked up the receiver.
“I’m sorry, Father-in-law.”
“No, I’m the one who’s ashamed.”
It shocked me to hear this patriarchal man apologize—in the five years I’d known him, I’d never once heard such words pass his lips. Shame and empathy just didn’t suit him. He never tired of boasting about having received the Order of Military Merit for serving in Vietnam, and not only was his voice extremely loud, it was the voice of a man with strongly fixed ideas. I myself, in Vietnam…seven Vietcong…as his son-in-law, I was only too familiar with the beginning of his monologue. According to my wife, he had whipped her over the calves until she was eighteen years old.
“In any case, you’re coming up next month so let’s sit her down and have it out then.”
The family get-together scheduled for the second Sunday this coming June was clearly going to be a very big deal. Even if no one said it openly, it was plain to see that they were all getting ready to give my wife a dressing-down.
Whether or not my wife was actually aware of any of this, she never seemed in the least bit perturbed. Aside from the fact that she deliberately continued to avoid sleeping with me—she’d even taken to sleeping in trousers—on the surface we were still a regular married couple. The only thing that had changed was that in the early hours of the morning, when I groped for my alarm clock, turned it off and sat up, she would be lying there ramrod straight, her eyes gazing upward in the darkness. After the meal at the restaurant, other people in the company had been noticeably cool toward me, but once the project I’d pushed through began to yield some far-from-negligible profits, all that unpleasantness appeared to have been entirely forgotten.
I sometimes told myself that even though the woman I was living with was a little odd, nothing particularly bad would come of it. I thought I could get by perfectly well just thinking of her as a stranger, or no, as a sister, or even a maid, someone who puts food on the table and keeps the house in good order. But it was no easy thing for a man in the prime of his life, for whom married life had always gone entirely without a hitch, to have his physical needs go unsatisfied for such a long period of time. So yes, one night when I returned home late and somewhat inebriated after a meal with colleagues, I grabbed hold of my wife and pushed her to the floor. Pinning down her struggling arms and tugging off her
trousers, I became unexpectedly aroused. She put up a surprisingly strong resistance and, spitting out vulgar curses all the while, it took me three attempts before I managed to insert myself successfully. Once that had happened, she lay there in the dark staring up at the ceiling, her face blank, as though she were a “comfort woman” dragged in against her will, and I was the Japanese soldier demanding her services. As soon as I finished, she rolled over and buried her face in the quilt. I went to have a shower, and by the time I returned to bed she was lying there with her eyes closed as if nothing had happened, or as though everything had somehow sorted itself out during the time I’d spent washing myself.
After this first time, it was easier for me to do it again, but each time, I would be seized by strange, ominous premonitions. I was thick-skinned by nature, and certainly wasn’t in the habit of entertaining outlandish notions, but the darkness and silence of the living room would strike a chill through me all the same. The following morning, sitting with my wife at the breakfast table—her lips pressed firmly closed as per usual, clearly not paying the slightest bit of attention to anything I might be saying—I would be unable to conceal a feeling of abhorrence when I looked across at her. I couldn’t stand the way her expression, which made it seem as though she were a woman of bitter experience, who had suffered many hardships, niggled at my conscience.
It was the evening three days before the family gathering. That day, the humidity in Seoul was the highest on record and the air-conditioning was blasting out in all the big shops. After spending all day in the office I was starting to shiver, and so I returned home a little earlier than usual. On opening the front door and catching sight of my wife, I stepped hastily inside and closed the door behind me; it was a corridor apartment, and the last thing I needed was for someone to pass by and peek in. She was sitting leaning against the decorative television cabinet, peeling potatoes, wearing thin white cotton trousers but with her upper body bare to the waist. She had now lost so much weight that her breasts were little more than a pair of small bumps beneath her sharply protruding collarbones.